Asking another question doesn't mean you answered my question, but I do think those addition expositions would've made a better movie.
Why do so many people hate 'Insurrection' so much?
- Thread starter Stroudarian
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I disagree, the story is multifaceted. There are different factions, and in the end (probably not TPTB's intent) the audience is left to decide which faction they believe to be the correct one.
This is unusual in Star Trek movies, usually there's a clear villain who is in the wrong and is the bad guy. At the end of Insurrection it isn't unambiguous that Picard really did the right thing.
Some people say that Insurrection is more like a series episode than a movie, I say okay. The series did a much better job presenting this kind of ethical ambiguity.
No, there's a scene right after Picard and his posse come down in the Captain's yacht, and Picard lays out the facts to the Ba'ku leadership.
This would have been the perfect time for the Ba'ku leaders to state that they want the particles to be collect to help billion of people and they agree to be relocated.
But they didn't.
The billions of people who would be helped by the particles made no attempt to move the Ba'ku.
I couldn't disagree more. It's completely unambiguous who the villains of the piece are. Dougherty (reluctantly, granted) authorises Ru'afo to destroy the Enterprise. Ru'afo later murders Dougherty when he won't play ball anymore. The Son'a just want revenge on those who exiled them and couldn't give a fig what the magic radiation stuff is used for beyond restoring their own health.
It's also clear that the plan wasn't fully authorised by the Federation council as they put a stop to it as soon as Riker manages to get through.
What the argument basically boils down to is "the ends justify the means" - except they really don't.
It's also clear that the plan wasn't fully authorised by the Federation council as they put a stop to it as soon as Riker manages to get through.
How can people still be arguing that this is justified? This planet is the Ba'ku's home. So much of a population's cultural identity comes from their home and forcibly removing them from it can devastate them, probably even more so when it's a relatively small group. They've lived there for three hundred years by this point. There are children there who've never known any other world. The United States of America has existed for about 240 years and is also made up mainly of immigrants. I'd say in that time, Americans have built up a pretty strong cultural identity and wouldn't take too kindly to being forcibly evicted.Jean-Luc Picard said:
What the argument basically boils down to is "the ends justify the means" - except they really don't.
I'm having trouble remembering/finding this scene. Could you please quote it or give a reference point? The next scene with Picard after the yacht trip is the village preparing to move out and Picard describing how they will avoid being transported. The next time he is telling Worf to get a haircut and then chatting with Anij. I can't find any scene where Picard relays the plan he learned from Dougherty to the Ba'ku, leadership or otherwise. Even then...
Even if they knew the entire plan and then did not offer to leave forever, that doesn't mean they refuse to share. Where is the scene where they both decline to leave, and then forbid anyone other than their small village from ever living on the planet?
Where's the scene where they're proactive about the situation? Surely a race as apparently advanced as the Baku allegedly are could have, at some point, said "Wait, we can reach a compromise here." Even if the Son'a turned them down, they'd come off a heck of a lot better.
What cultural identity? They're a bunch of bronze-age elves in a self-imposed pre-industrial village.
They can have their impossibly clean and white "tech is bad mmmkay" lifestyle anywhere. I wonder how long it will take them to abandon their oh-so-noble values and decide medical technology is okay when they no longer have a magical fountain of youth all to themselves.
I think that's where the film went wrong, in that what you're saying is only really partially correct. The Federation are violating their own laws, but doing so in order to benefit billions of lives. The Son'a might be intending to trash an entire planet for their own ends, but for one thing it's quite literally a matter of life and death for them, and for another they could potentially have just obliterated the Ba'ku settlement from orbit and then harvested the rings, but they didn't do that.
But then you get to the Ba'ku themselves, who the film treats as unambiguously wholesome and good, and decrees that anyone who would harm (or even inconvenience) them in any way is thoroughly evil, end of discussion. And that's what really seems to grate with viewers. I think it would have worked better if, for instance, it turned out that the Ba'ku actually did have the technology the Son'a needed to heal themselves without making the planet uninhabitable, but they had instinctively grown to fear the use of technology due to its role in destroying their original planet, and/or Sojef was so fanatical in his hatred of both the Son'a and technology in general that the other Ba'ku didn't have the courage to go against him, and seeing what lengths this has driven the Son'a to finally convinces the other Ba'ku to rebel against him (upon which Ru'afo decides that he's actually just fine with murdering all the Ba'ku, leading to the requisite action climax).
Yeah, to everyone who's claiming the Son'a were intending to wipe out the Baku from the get-go and never planned to work in even marginally good faith with the Federation, I say - citation needed.
Because what we see from the get-go is the Son'a working with the Federation, even if they've committed pertinent lies of omission. The holoship was Starfleet property, so it could be inferred that the Baku were going to end up in their care if they were relocated.
Because what we see from the get-go is the Son'a working with the Federation, even if they've committed pertinent lies of omission. The holoship was Starfleet property, so it could be inferred that the Baku were going to end up in their care if they were relocated.
I still wonder why the Federation Council considered this planet as their own, and presumably does not do so in most other cases of planets with a non-Federation population in Federation space (considering the planet the property of the population).
Besides the desirability of the resource, they probably knew the Ba'ku weren't native all along and hadn't been too long on the planet. You have a pristine planet, with exactly one village. No signs of other villages, or of (deserted) buildings anywhere, no fossils (or a much larger population if they're all immortal), while you see several children so you know their rate of procreation isn't extremely low. That doesn't exactly correspond with what you'd expect had they evolved there, or had been there for a really long time (thousands of years).
In fact, if the Federation had made an estimate based on the number of children they saw and the total number of Ba'ku, they'd probably arrive at a time significantly shorter than those 300 years the Ba'ku mention.
Besides the desirability of the resource, they probably knew the Ba'ku weren't native all along and hadn't been too long on the planet. You have a pristine planet, with exactly one village. No signs of other villages, or of (deserted) buildings anywhere, no fossils (or a much larger population if they're all immortal), while you see several children so you know their rate of procreation isn't extremely low. That doesn't exactly correspond with what you'd expect had they evolved there, or had been there for a really long time (thousands of years).
In fact, if the Federation had made an estimate based on the number of children they saw and the total number of Ba'ku, they'd probably arrive at a time significantly shorter than those 300 years the Ba'ku mention.
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If Picard found Harry Mudd on the planet (after living there for a century), would he have started the Insurrection against Starfleet to defend the rights of one man?
^which of course, happens all the time in our current societies. Suppose someone lives on a piece of land he owns that is desired to lay a new rail track on -- if worst comes to worst and both the person absolutely refuses to budge and the government/huge company is adamant that the track should run there and nowhere else, if the stakes are high enough (or the common good important enough) he will ultimately simply be expropriated and paid a compensation-- there's a reason most, if not all, countries have provisions for that in their laws.
The situation is of course different for a group of people, but then again the question becomes: at which point does it become wrong?
The situation is of course different for a group of people, but then again the question becomes: at which point does it become wrong?
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Except we aren't dealing with eminat domain, the Ba'ku settled on the world before the Federation was even founded. Hence the planet was theirs not the Federations.
Not necessarily.
Consider the following hypothetical scenario, for example.
Suppose that the region and the planets had been claimed 500 years ago by another empire, "x". 200 years later the Ba'ku come and settle there. Empire "x" never notices (or doesn't take the trouble to drive them out). Another 200 years later (so 100 years ago from our perspective), during negotiations, the entire region and its planets are ceded to the Federation.
At that point in time, the Federation would have the oldest rights, 200 years predating those of the Ba'ku, even though they themselves are younger. In that case, all the Ba'ku can lay claim to is of long-term squatting that might (or might not) give them certain rights of usage/ownership (but there already was a discussion about this).
Of course, this is just a hypothetical scenario. There's nothing in the movie that indicates anything like this would the case-- or anything countering it. We simply don't know the exact circumstances, but there might very well be good precedent for the Federation to consider the planet as their own, and not the Ba'ku's.
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Sure thats a possibility but as you point out none of that is in the film, so we have to base our opinions on what is in the film. You could add that the region of space was claimed by a rce which later became a Federation member. Adding something like the above into the film might have added more shades of grey into the film
I think I basically brought this up before when I compared the Baku to (potentially) squatters, and asked at what point does squatting make a property legally the property of the squatters...
My view would be that a race unquestionably owns their homeworld, but for planets they later claim, the race can't claim unequivocally that the planet is theirs...and no amount of squatting on the planet makes it unequivocally theirs.
Hell, what if other sentient life subsequently evolved on the world the Baku settled on? Would it be able to claim eminent domain and kick the Baku off?
My view would be that a race unquestionably owns their homeworld, but for planets they later claim, the race can't claim unequivocally that the planet is theirs...and no amount of squatting on the planet makes it unequivocally theirs.
Hell, what if other sentient life subsequently evolved on the world the Baku settled on? Would it be able to claim eminent domain and kick the Baku off?
And the Celts are still living in the UK..
The Federation council were wrong. The Baku were there, living on the planet before the Federation existed. You do not claim inhabited land of a another world as your own unless you're an imperialist.
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